Sun Plans Java Enterprise System, Dev Tools On Linux Later In 2004
Sun's Java Desktop System for Linux hit the streets in December. However, the company doesn't expect to deliver its server stack and tools for Linux until later this year.
Simon Phipps, chief technology evangelist at Sun, said in an interview with CRN that plans call for the JES for Linux to ship midyear and the Java Studio development tools line to ship generally in 2004.
Sun already shipped its JES for Solaris, and the company originally planned to deliver JES for Linux in January, said Sun Executive Vice President of Software Jonathan Schwartz. The system, which includes an application, portal and identity management middleware stack, was developed as part of the code-named Project Orion.
Though not addressing the delivery issue, Phipps said the JES for Linux will appeal to a limited segment of the market. He added that the Sun stack is "more mature" than rival offerings, such as Red Hat's Open Source Architecture.
"There isn't a huge amount of migration off [Solaris], and a company with a huge SPARC base is unlikely to move to Linux," Phipps said. However, Sun has no intention of leaving that opportunity wide open to Red Hat and others, he said.
"JES is a complete stack," Phipps said. "Red Hat is bravely entering a new market and is competing with a product line that has a proven user base. Ours is mature."
At LinuxWorld, Sun also plans to preview a desktop solution for developers that combines Java Studio Creator with the Java Desktop System and the NetBeans open-source integrated development environment. In addition, the vendor has ambitious plans for Linux-enabling its development tools portfolio, ranging from the NetBeans IDE to full enterprise versions of the Java Studio platform, company executives said.
The current version of Java Studio Standard is available for Linux. Sun plans to ship Java Studio Enterprise and Java Studio Creator for Linux this year. NetBeans 3.6, NetBeans 4.0, Java Studio Mobility and Sun Studio C/C++ tools are also slated to be offered on Linux by the year's end.